[meteorite-list] hot meteorites

From: Donald Blakeslee <blakesle_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:41:10 2004
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.20010214154023.00707af4_at_twsuvm.uc.twsu.edu>

In an earlier post, someone mention John Lewis' book that lists meteorites
said to have sarted fires. I checked it out and find some of his cases
credible and some not. He lists 19 meteorites said to have started fires or
to have been very hot, and he mentions another three in the text, for a
total of 22 cases.

Five are reported by Yau et al. from early Chinese documents. The accounts
date from AD 476 to 1504. While there are no stones or irons to examine
today, four of the accounts make clear that a stone or iron did fall from
the sky.

Another said to have fallen in the Punjab in 1620, was reported only in
1808. Since the accoutn says it was made into knives and swords, it is
clear that the object was an iron.

Another early atory that seems pretty convincing is from Jamaica in 1700.
A Doctor Henry Barnham investigated a fireball and found several impact
holes around which the grass had been burned. He also smelled something
like sulfur. I have seen the portion of his account that mentions the
holes in another history of meteoritics, with, I think, the part about the
burned grass omitted. Barnham wrote the account in 1718, so it didn't
occur to him to did into the holes to see what he could find.

Several others also fell before the modern understanding of meteorites
developed. One reported in France in 1769 was said to have punctured the
wood of a barn and to have set its contents afire. She hole in a wooden
plank gives it some credibility, given that people generally did not make
the connection between meteors and falling rocks at that time.

Three supposed falls in 1769, 1800 and 1801, do not have any reference to a
stone or iron in the descriptions. But in 1803, The White Bull tavern was
struck by something that knocked down the chimney, and a grass fire ensued.
 But did the meteorite (if there was one) ignite the fire, or was it the
ashes and cinders from the chimney?

All of the later cases, from 1835 on, fall into the era when people would
have tried to collect the meteorite. Yet of the remaining cases, only a
few yielded objects for study. One (Kirkland, Washington, 1955) is a
clear-cut case of fraud, according to Buchwald. Another (Kochi, Japan,
1949) was merely described as hot. It is listed as questionable in the
1985 Catalogue.

Another, described as a 4 pound iron that fell at Stratford, Texas, and
started a grass fire in 1933, is not listed in the Catalogue. It appears
to be another of those "hot meteorite" stories that didn't pan out.
Indeed, in Lewis' list, the least reliable source seems to be the New York
Times, which reported stories on what have turned out to be non-meteorites
(i.e., no object ever came to light) in Bellefontaine, Ohio (1907);
Shepard, Texas (1909); Mexico (1910); Berkshire Hills, Mass (1921); and the
Stratford, Texas story.

At any rate, there seems to be an interesting pattern here. The earlier
the account of a fire, the more credible it sems to be, because for the
later cases, where we know we should have meteorites to look at, they are
not forthcoming.

So how to proceed? How many of you know of falls wheree the meteorite was
collected quickly and was NOT reported to be hot. I have run across only a
few:
Drake Creek 1827 cold when freshly fallen
Harrison Co. 1859 described as not warm
Dhurmsala 1860 had frost on its surface
Lumpkin 1869 neither hot nor cold
Forest City 1890 fell on dry grass but did not char it

I would be interested in other examples.


Don Blakeslee
Department of Anthropology
Wichita State University
Wichita, KS 67230-0052
Received on Wed 14 Feb 2001 04:40:23 PM PST